What listeners are saying:"Loved it! Mika meets Pulp - humorous and intelligent and well constructed.""Trendy and youthful.""A feel of the Beach Boys-Kinks-Beatles.""This guy is the next John Lennon."While musical theater has long borrowed from pop, Holley's"theater-pop" borrows from musical theater: character-driven songs with evocative settings. Complete with Brill Building style arrangements, Confessions of a College Student is essentially a radio-musical, as listeners follow the ups and downs of infatuation, rejection, and retrospect. Following the High School Musical phenomenon, audiences may now be ready for a"College Musical". And, unlike University A Cappella by Ben Folds, this college music is virtually a one-man record--much like the projects Ben Folds is known for. (Appropriately enough, listeners often mistake Lamar Holley for Ben Folds, because their voices are so similar.)Lamar Holley: Making His ConfessionsConfessions of a College Student: the autobiographical one-man pop-musical began as love songs dedicated to objects of the artist's unrequited affection.Lines like,"What's this love I say I'm waiting for?" and"This is a love song, I think," underscore the songwriter's confusion--so common to college courtship--trying to figure out what love is. Lamar Holley's lyrics also savor"fleeting moments", such as flashbacks of"Forgotten Friends" or a"Slow Dance" with someone with whom he'll"never be together".Best of all, Lamar's lyrics take us painfully and humorously into the psychology and"Biology" of rejection--where one has to"Pretend That She's Ugly" or suffer the pain of being"Lovesick". Lamar Holley recorded Confessions of a College Student in the small spare bedroom of his duplex during holiday breaks and late nights. One big break came on January 1 of 2009, when he received an email from one of his idols, Grammy-winning producer Jack Joseph Puig (John Mayer, The Grays), who was interested in mixing the record. Lamar scrambled to finish the album and raise tens of thousands of dollars to fund the mix, but ultimately replaced Puig with Ryan Freeland (Colbie Caillat, Ingrid Michaelson). Lamar admits:"Jack thought the music needed to go in a more commercial direction, while I was interested in making it as original as possible. I lost a lot of money, but I had to follow my instincts. Ryan captured what I was going for."Lamar took the project beyond downloads and singer-songwriter appearances by crafting a dramatic story line around the songs, now performed as a stage musical at college campuses."I'm just a college student. I'm like in limbo: somewhere between what I used to be and what I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to be working on becoming what I want to be when I grow up. But I don't think I'm growing up."So begins the musical's first monologue. And what's the obstacle to his anticipated adulthood? You'll have to see the musical to find out. But listening to the songs paints a pretty obvious picture. And, like all good songs, each"confession" on the album is a story all by itself.